The 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night that
marked the outbreak of violence against the Jews of Europe,
was last week. Many are at work documenting the horrors and
bestiality of those times. Not enough are paying attention to
the heroism that was expressed in small acts that were
private, known only to those who performed them and to
Hashem. The Center for the Documentation of Holocaust
Survivors in Bnei Brak is working on that.

"When we fled the shtetl my mother and I arrived in a
village of goyim, carrying false documents.

"One day I was walking down the street when a sheigetz
came up to me and called out, `You're a Jew.' Instantly into
my head flickered a memory of an argument I had had with my
chavrusa when I was 13, back when we could still sit
and learn Torah in peace. My chavrusa maintained it
was forbidden for a Jew to deny he is a Jew even if he is
endangered because of it, and I argued with him. Now, when
this sheigitz identified me as a Jew, I decided my
chavrusa was right. Instead of calling him a liar I
showed him the false papers and said, `See for yourself.'

"This started a commotion. Other boys gathered around and all
of them surrounded me shouting, `You're a Jew,' and then the
Ukrainian police arrived. `What happened?' they asked.

"`We caught a Jew,' said the boys. Again I showed them the
papers. They took me to the Gestapo. At the Gestapo the
German officer asked me, `Are you a Jew?' and again I did not
deny it. I just took out the papers again and said, `Read
what it says here.' The officer looked. He must not have
believed it, but he released me . . . "

"Do you understand what's going on here?" asked Rav S., who
has interviewed a number of Holocaust survivors. "A young boy
whose life was in danger faces a band of goyim
threatening to take serious measures against him, and he is
unwilling to do anything against halocho. Isn't it fabulous?
Unbelievable!"

The Chareidi Perspective

These type of stories give Rav S. the inspiration to
interview Holocaust survivors again and again. Rav S. is one
of the few men who have volunteered for the task of
documenting the memories of survivors who still remember and
are still able to tell their stories. There are not very many
of them left and their numbers grow smaller with each passing
day. "You can make an appointment with someone and by the
time the date arrives there's nobody to interview," he
says.

From a technical standpoint the task of documentation is
easier than ever: everything is videotaped and transferred
directly onto a disk without having to edit, translate or
write. But to listen to the accounts is a much harder
task.

The Center for the Documentation of Holocaust Survivors in
Bnei Brak is the only organization of its kind that employs
chareidi interviewers who extract memories of mesirus
nefesh, kiddush Hashem, emunoh and bitochon from
the survivors.

"We do not seek out descriptions of the atrocities," says
project director Mrs. Channah Shtub. "Of course they cannot
be disregarded and if an interviewee describes them we won't
interrupt, but the main objective is to get a message for the
future, to learn from them, to do what all of the secular
organizations that preserve the memory of the Holocaust do
not do: to encourage the interviewee to recount
vibrant Jewish life in the shtetl before the
Holocaust, and retaining Judaism and tzelem Elokim
during the Churban."

Twelve million Jews lived in Europe before the Holocaust. For
the sake of comparison, today there are about six million
people living in the State of Israel. The dimensions of the
atrocity committed are hard to envision. Never in history was
there a planned annihilation like this, a mass uprooting like
this, both from the Jewish way of life and from life itself.
Only the individual stories of survivors from Poland,
Hungary, Romania, Germany, etc. can open a crack of
understanding.

For many years they remained silent. Perhaps it was the urge
to survive, to return to normal life, as if the Holocaust had
been an insignificant chapter in their lives. Perhaps there
was an unjustified sense of shame due to all the chatter
about going like sheep to the slaughter. Perhaps there was a
desire to protect the children from growing up with
nightmares.

Now the wounds are being opened and the scabs prove to have
never really existed. Now that the children have all grown up
healthy and sound of mind, now that there are already
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the survivors feel
their mission is complete and they can permit themselves to
remove the everything's-just-fine masks from their faces and
return to the past. They, too, were children once and their
childhood was stolen from them with unsurpassed cruelty.

A Story

"We lived in Serbia," she begins, and only the deep breath
she takes before beginning her story releases the tension
that seizes her. "A small house with my two parents, three
children and my grandmother on my father's side. A regular
house in which the boys studied in cheder and the
girls studied at home. Grandfather was a grain-dealer and
Father worked with him." She recalls the preparations for
Pesach and the various holidays. Life was entirely normal in
a town where the Jews had a clear majority.

Then the war broke out. Father was taken away to work far
away. One day it was announced everyone had to report to the
town playground the next morning with basic necessities in
hand. "Mother baked and cried," she recalls clearly. "Packed
and cried. Without Father she felt lost and the future did
not bode well. She baked bread and pitas and packed
everything into a knapsack. She put salt and soap and other
items of this sort in the knapsack, because it was important
to maintain good hygiene."

Thus they set out on the journey. "Strange. There are things
I remember so clearly. I can't remember what my mother's face
looked like, but I remember the terrible rain that poured
down that night. In the forest everyone called out to
everyone else, parents searched for their children. By
morning we already had nothing to eat. The rain got the bread
soggy and everything got mixed together, the pitas, the salt,
the soap."

An older woman, but certainly not elderly. It was clear she
had worked on her appearance so her grandchildren would see
her on the disk looking her best. She speaks in a torrent of
words, answering the handful of questions posed by the
interviewer who gently steers the conversation. From time to
time she takes another deep breath, blinking her eyelids and
pulling at her lips, then continues talking.

They met up with her father later, along the way. In their
wanderings they happened to arrive at the town where he had
been put to work. And then Grandma passed away and Father
buried her in the shrouds she had made for herself and had
carried without her throughout the journey. "She got a Jewish
burial and Father sat shiva for her."

Father got killed and was seen no more. The weeping children
were forced to keep running. When Mother realized what had
happened she said without a pause, "Without Father life is
not worth living," and thus they crossed the border into the
Ukraine.

How the Project Started

Perhaps these are well-known stories, but not from firsthand
accounts. Many of the children of those telling the stories
have never heard them from their parents. "The first time I
became aware of what my father went through was when I heard
the recorded testimony. I cried and cried. Until then Abba
had never told us a thing."

The next generation sometime feels the loss only after it is
too late. Suddenly they realize they have no past, that they
do not know how to tell their children who their grandparents
were, where they grew up, how they came to Eretz Yisroel,
what they went through, who their parents' parents were.
Nothing. A blank slate. As if history began with the
subsequent generation.

M. owes the painful glance into his father's past to the
volunteer interviewers at the Center for Holocaust
Documentation, and she was the one who brought the center's
existence to our attention. It has been in operation for a
few years and the staff regrets not having begun the center
earlier, for every day the list of Holocaust survivors
shrinks.

The center is part of Yad Zahava, a memorial to those who
perished in the Holocaust Hy'd. The project was
initiated by Meir Shilo to honor the memory of his mother,
Zahava Schwartz o"h. A Holocaust survivor, Zahava
Schwartz took her children on a "roots journey" long before
such trips become common and organized after the Iron Curtain
was opened. After the journey, her children asked her to
continue disseminating the memory of the Holocaust to keep it
from being forgotten and to ensure that it could not be
denied.

During the last years of her life Mrs. Schwartz worked on an
information campaign and even escorted groups to Europe to
witness the sites where the killing took place. When she
passed away unexpectedly, her son Meir promised himself he
would continue her work. He set up Yad Zahava, opening
various branches around the country to start testimony
centers.

The tie between Yad Zahava and Bnei Brak was formed by Mrs.
Shtub, whose parents' relatives were murdered in the
Holocaust. She too embarked on a roots journey and came back
stunned. Upon seeing the dozens of cities and towns that were
physical and spiritual centers for the masses of Beis
Yisroel and that today are nothing more than road signs,
she realized the true dimensions of the Holocaust. No
remembrance of the yeshivas brimming with talmidei
chachomim or the courts of the admorim.

As she beheld the extermination camps and the ground beneath
them drenched with Jewish blood, she began to take in the
meaning of the tragedy. "Before my eyes I keep seeing the
wall of the Ninth Fort outside Slobodka where Jews etched
with their fingernails the words, "Yidden, gedenkt"
("Jews, remember")!

With the goal of setting up an institution to record
testimonials that would immortalize the spiritual heroism and
the acts of kiddush Hashem by Jews who did not lose
their Jewish image and their human image during the
Holocaust, she began to recruit volunteer workers.

Channah Nauman, one of the activists, relates how she was
convinced to join the project. "I hesitated to make a
commitment when the idea was first suggested to me. At the
time my father z"l was in the hospital. One day I
asked the head of the ward, `If all 70 of the patients
hospitalized there were Holocaust survivors, how many of them
could recount their memories?'

"`About five,' answered the professor. That's when I
understood the need to hurry, not to miss a single day, or
else it would be too late."

Mrs. Zahava Klein, who runs the studio, arrived following an
interview with her parents that convinced her of the urgency
of documenting the survivors' stories.

Some of the elderly Holocaust survivors are under nursing
care and their numbers are dropping quickly (and the Finance
Ministry wants to reduce their allowances, by the way). As
the sand in the hourglass runs out on the survivors, just as
the organizations involved in demanding compensation and
remuneration have picked up their step, organizations
involved in gathering their testimonials are also hard at
work.

A few years ago the Spielberg Foundation was set up to pay
for the documentation of 50,000 testimonials. Afterwards Yad
Vashem continued and is still continuing the Witness Pages
project, at first in writing and now in sound recordings and
on film.

The chareidi public, on the other hand, has very few
organizations involved in gathering the unique testimonials
of observant Jews who did not change their beliefs or their
way of life even during those dark days. Ginzach Kiddush
Hashem promotes a project of this kind in Jerusalem and now
it is assisting the testimonial institute in Bnei Brak by
providing advice and background material for interviewers.

The film studio was donated by the City of Bnei Brak, which
provided the site for free and continues to assist in other
ways. The interviewers work on a volunteer basis, but they
are very professional in their craft. All of them passed a
course that included lectures (by volunteer lecturers) on old
age and on understanding the mentality of the elderly, how to
get them to open up and background lectures on the
Holocaust.

The interview procedure is very orderly. Every interviewer
fills out a detailed form and holds a pre-interview meeting
with the elderly person in his home.

Locating Holocaust survivors who are willing and able to tell
their stories is a task in and of itself. "Often the children
contact us," says Mrs. L., who is both an interviewer and a
photographer. They say, `My father [or mother] went through
the Holocaust. It would be a shame for his experiences to be
forgotten. Who knows when his memory will betray him and how
much time he has left to tell his story?' Others report to us
about neighbors, relatives, etc. And I am a detective, too. I
hear a hint during the course of conversation about a
Holocaust survivor and I immediately begin to recruit
him."

In some cases it is the first time the interviewee has
exposed his past. In other cases he has told his story over
and over again, but the children want everything to be
properly documented in an organized fashion.

The only shortcoming is that the conditions needed to open
the testimonials to the public have not yet been created.
This requires transcribing, editing, publishing, etc. But
those who are interested in using the disk can do so at
Ginzach Kiddush Hashem, or other places, assuming the
interviewee did not restrict the use of the disk to his
family members alone or to be used only after he passes
away.

They Set Up Good Families

"They are nice people," says Rav S. "Most of the people I've
met are good people, with fondness for others, with a sense
of humor, who know how to enjoy everything, and have a great
deal of wisdom. Even if they hold bitterness in their heart,
they know how to hide it."

Rav S., who says he never lacked anything, always received
help from his large family and whose path in life was
smoothed out for him, finds it hard to understand how these
people, who underwent such harsh atrocities, who lost
everything dear to them in the Holocaust and arrived in Eretz
Yisroel with nothing, with nobody to help them manage, "who
didn't even have someone to give them a check for their
wedding," managed to rehabilitate themselves, to build new
lives for themselves, to set up good families.

All of them are happy to report, "Besiyata deShmaya I
have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren taking
care of me . . . "

Many of them arrive at the interview escorted by family
members afraid they will not hold up under the emotional
strain, but so far nobody has ever broken down. "Even those
who looked feeble and weak at first girded their strength
during the interview," he says.

Yated Ne'eman: Do they ever suddenly regret that they
came?

Rav S: Generally not. They hesitate before agreeing to
the interview, but after the pre-interview meeting they are
prepared to sit in front of the camera and sound recording
device, and to share their story. And they recount everything
that comes up in their memory, while the interviewer guides
the conversation to maintain order.

YN: Do they burst into tears when they recall the
hardships and torment?

Rav S: Sometimes a tear drips down from the corner of
an eye, but there are no outbursts of crying. They have
already passed that stage. The interesting thing is that the
tears flow when they describe the more distant past, the
tranquil childhood before the outbreak of the war that
cruelly severed everything. They cry a bit when they recall
their parents, aunts and uncles, grandmother. The loss is
impossible to forget and they will miss them until their
dying day.

First they talk and talk, recalling all sorts of minor events
they have never thought about. And after a while they say,
"Oy, I forgot to tell you about the blows I received . .
."

Most of these people studied in cheder or yeshiva
before the war and didn't return to their studies until well
after the war, yet all of them are full of Torah. Torah is
their life. All of them know how to learn and the verses and
sayings by Chazal fall right out of their mouths. And none of
them ever voice thoughts of finding fault in HaKodosh
Boruch Hu's ways during the Holocaust.

Let me tell you a nice little story: One of the interviewees,
a Chassidic Jew with a long beard and a constant smile at the
corners of his mouth, was 14 when he was imprisoned in a work
camp. The person in charge of his cell was an assimilated Jew
who enjoyed making blasphemous remarks for the prisoners to
hear. Meanwhile this 14-year- old liked to goad him, greeting
him with "Gut Shabbos" and the like.

One day the young man transgressed camp regulations and the
camp commandant, a hulking German, sentenced him to losing
his bread ration [for the day]. Being deprived of bread was
tantamount to a death sentence for a young man receiving only
one portion of bread per day. The assimilated Jew heard about
his punishment and tried to provoke him. "This time your
Ribono Shel Olom didn't help you," he taunted.

"You wait and you'll see Him bring me the bread right in the
palm of my hand," replied the boy with total confidence.

Full of audacity the boy went to the commandant's office and
asked for his bread ration. The clerk checked and said he was
not entitled to it. Meanwhile the commandant arrived. "What
are you doing here? I told you that you won't get any bread
today."

Then he stepped into his office, leaving the door open. The
commandant was cold from the freezing draft. "Shut the door!"
he shouted.

"From the outside or the inside?" the young man asked,
feigning innocence. This impudence, which could have cost him
his life, amused the commandant. He laughed and laughed until
his whole body shook, and gave the boy the bread.

Then he went back to the assimilated Jew and said, "See? The
Ribono Shel Olom gave me my bread!"

Here's another story of mesirus nefesh for Torah, a
story I tell my kids and grandchildren when they are
negligent in their studies:

The young man hiding out in the town of goyim with his
mother, with a false identification, and who studied in a
yeshiva before the war [mentioned above] felt the lack of a
single Hebrew letter in the town. This is what he felt the
lack of most acutely.

One day his mother went to the marketplace to buy vegetables.
The seller wrapped every vegetable separately in used sheets
of paper. When she came home they saw the papers were pages
of gemora, in order. The boy descended on the papers
as if he had come across great booty and studied them over
and over again until he knew them by heart. He kept the
papers off to the side, near the fireplace, among the other
papers designated for starting fires, to avoid raising
suspicions.

One day when they lit the fire they inadvertently used the
pages of the gemora. The boy, realizing the mistake,
whisked them out of the fire, but a hole had already burned
its way through the middle of each page.

He continued to study from these pages, primarily from
memory, for a long time.

All of the witnesses, says Rav S., feel their lives were
saved miraculously, unlike the millions who were
exterminated. Often they describe their rescue with words
like "two mal'ochim accompanied me" or "Eliyohu Hanovi
came to me in the form of . . . " and they give thanks and
make chasdei Hashem widely known.

More Stories

Mrs. L. tells an astounding stories of girls keeping mitzvos
through mesirus nefesh. The lady who told her one
story was seven years old when the war broke out. She and her
family were living in Hungary. Her father was a gabbai
tzedokoh and he was afraid the Germans would confiscate
the tzedokoh funds. Deep, hidden pockets were sewn
into her dress and she was sent alone, a seven- year-old
girl, from Hungary to Vienna to pass on the money.

By the time the ghetto was set up she was 11 years old. The
Jewish girls were gathered in one place, where non-Jewish
women were placed in charge of them. It was Yom Kippur and
the girls were fasting in any case, because there was nothing
to eat. Hungry and weak, suddenly on Yom Kippur the overseer
brought tomatoes. She remembers they were small and green,
but to their eyes it was food fit for a king.

At first the girls could not resist the temptation. Then the
first one put the tomato in her mouth, rolled it around and
around in her cheeks fighting with herself, and then took it
out of her mouth again. She was unable to eat during the
fast. She gave the tomato to her friend, who rolled it around
in her mouth and then took it out. The other girls followed
suit. The last girl returned the tomato, full of saliva and
mental anguish, to the overseer.

Is it any wonder that Mrs. L. volunteers to interview such
women? During the less busy times of year she interviews or
photographs as much as twice a week. And she also does other
types of volunteer work.

Mrs. L. notes that the survivors who come to bear witness
often forget relatively recent events, but invariably
remember exactly when their peaceful world collapsed. They
know the day of the week, the date, the time and whether it
was a Rosh Chodesh or a Shabbos. Most of the atrocities were
perpetrated on Shabbos and holidays. Perhaps this was the
terrible tragedy that etched the date into their memories or
perhaps they repeated it time after time as a reference point
on the calendar.

On Rosh Hashana, for example, everybody recited the
tefillos together. Without siddurim or
machzorim, each person would recite out loud the part
he remembered by heart, and together they would recite the
tefillos of the Yomim Noraim.

Most of the survivors are willing to relive the terrible
events as part of the battle to keep them from being
forgotten. The stories must be told and kept alive in memory
for the sake of the kedoshim and to prevent such
atrocities from recurring in the future, chas
vesholom.

Fifty years after the war, when Holocaust denial began to
spread, Mrs. H. decided to speak. She called Yad Vashem and
was told a course for Holocaust speakers had opened. She sat
there, stirred with emotion, and cried continuously, perhaps
for the first time in all those years. There she recalled her
father's last wishes: "Promise me you'll do whatever you can
to survive. You're the only one in the whole family left
alive. You must live and set up a Jewish home."

The interviews over and over again, as well as the
appearances in schools and delegations to the death camps, do
not become any easier. Every retelling is hard for her, every
time she is unable to sleep at night, but she continues for
the sake of memory. "Many of the survivors like me have no
concrete reminders of the past. No photos, no gravesites. On
tours of the towns of Lithuania and Poland it is difficult to
find any traces of the vibrant Jewish life that went on there
for centuries. Only the stories remain. This is the only
memorial. And as long as the Ribono Shel Olom gives me
the strength I will continue to tell people."

*

This fabulous project is sustained through the merit of a
handful of busy women who find the time to volunteer for this
holy endeavor, and through the support of the City of Bnei
Brak and Yad Zahava. (To contact HaMerkaz LeTiud Nitzulei
Shoah call 03-6199572.)

"When I get to mechayei hameisim in Shemoneh
Esrei," said one survivor, "I think not only about the
Resurrection to come, but also about ourselves every day. All
those who were with me in the concentration camp on the day
of liberation. Were we not among the dead? Dry bones. And
through chasdei Shomayim we came back to life, began
new lives. Hashem blew a new neshomoh into us. Isn't
this true resurrection?"